You’ve likely seen examples of 360º video on YouTube before, those curious little things that allow you to look around the scene as it plays out. Most of these come courtesy of custom rigs that people have created to capture video from all angles, using software to stitch them all together. Others are simply CGI that’s been rendered in the appropriate way to give you the full 360º view. Whilst these are amazing demonstrations of the technology they all share the same fundamental limitation: you’re rooted to the camera. True 3D video, where you’re able to move freely about the scene, is not yet a reality but it will be soon thanks to Lytro’s new camera, the Immerge.
That odd UFO looking device is the Immerge, containing hundreds of the lightfield sensors (the things that powered the original Lytro and the Illum) within each of its rings. There’s no change in the underlying technology, the lightfield sensors have the same intensity plus direction sensing capabilities, however these will be the first sensors in Lytro’s range to boast video capture. This, combined with the enormous array of sensors, allows the Immerge to capture all the details of a scene, including geometry and lighting. The resulting video, which needs to be captured and processed on a specially designed server that the camera needs, allows the viewer to move around the scene independently of the camera. Suffice to say that’s a big step up from the 360º video we’re used to seeing today and, I feel, is what 3D video should be.
The Immerge poses some rather interesting challenges however, both in terms of content production and its consumption. For starters it’s wildly different from any kind of professional camera currently available, one that doesn’t allow a crew to be anywhere near it whilst its filming (unless they want to be part of the scene). Lytro understands this and has made it remotely operable however that doesn’t detract from the fact that traditional filming techniques simply won’t work with the Immerge. Indeed this kind of camera demands a whole new way of thinking as you’re no longer in charge of where the viewer will be looking, nor where they’ll end up in a scene.
Similarly on the consumer end the Immerge relies on the burgeoning consumer VR industry in order to have an effective platform for it to really shine. This isn’t going to be a cinema style experience any time soon, the technology simply isn’t there, instead Immerge videos will likely be viewed by people at home on their Oculus Rifts or similar. There’s definitely a growing interest in this space by consumers, as I’ve detailed in the past, however for a device like the Immerge I’m not sure that’s enough. There’s potentially other possibilities that I’m not thinking of, like shooting on the Immerge and then editing everything down to a regular movie, which might make it more viable but i feel like that would be leaving so much of the Immerge’s potential at the door.
Despite all that though the Immerge does look like an impressive piece of kit and it will be able to do things that no other device is currently capable of doing. This pivot towards the professional video market could be the play that makes their struggle in the consumer market all worthwhile. We won’t have to wait long to see it either as Lytro has committed to the Immerge being publicly available in Q1 next year. Whether or not it resonates with the professional content creators and their consumers will be an interesting thing to see as the technology really does have a lot of promise.
